Marketing budget

Gartner's 2025 CMO Spend Survey covered 402 CMOs, mostly at companies with $1 billion or more in revenue. It found budgets held flat at 7.7% of overall company revenue. The CMO Survey from Deloitte, Duke University and the American Marketing Association put the figure at 9.4% of company revenues. The two samples differ, and bigger companies spend a lower percentage.

Take the Gartner split. Paid media took 30.6% of marketing budgets, which translates to roughly 2.4% of total company revenue. That is 30.6% of a 7.7% budget. Running the same two-step math on each line shows the board what each channel costs as a slice of revenue.

Company size moves the number. Across 323 business-to-business (B2B) technology companies, the median was 10% of revenue, but it ranged from 14% below $5M ARR to 4% above $250M ARR, where ARR means annual recurring revenue. More on size bands is at /benchmarks/marketing-budget-percent-of-revenue.

Starting from the percentage. Spendesk's guidance is to set the marketing budget from growth objectives first, then check it against a revenue percentage. Directive describes a similar method: work backward from revenue goals to pipeline, conversion rates and channel cost.

Comparing budgets without agreeing on what counts. Large companies put labor at 21.9% of the marketing budget because they include the whole function's payroll. A peer that excludes salaries will look leaner on paper.

Setting it once. A budget should not be a number you set in January and forget. Quarterly reviews keep it tied to results.